Beginner telescope advice

[dwswolves]

hi all, I've been looking to buy a telescope for a while now and after reading the guides (found on this forum, thank you), I've kind of narrowed it down to 3 or 4 possibilities. I'm aware that my budget isn't going to get me a lot, but I'd like a telescope that will allow me to do some astrophotography in the future, if possible. So can anyone recommend a telescope in the £250-350 range that will get me started? Thanks for reading

[Ganymede12]

What's your budget?

I have read that the Sky-Watcher Heritage 130P dobsonian is a very good starter scope (easy to store and transport too). It is also cheap. (I have not used one, this is only what I have read.)

I started with a Sky-Watcher Mercury 707 which is a very good scope. Easy to store and transport and is also cheaper than the Heritage.

My current scope is a Skyliner 200P dob. I have only used it twice so far, both time on the moon, but I am loving it!

[Capricorn]

Only advice is forget astrophotography on that budget.

It is a fairly expensive aspect of astronomy and is different to photography - when in "normal" photography do you track an object for 60 seconds, do that 10 times then use software to "add" all the shots together into one. No shake, judder or mis-tracking is allowed, also the set up of the mount has to be very precise as well - say half an hour just to set the mount up. As I said it is different.

The nearest you could get is to purchase a scope on on Alt/Az motor driven mount and at some time attach a web cam and image planets, not suitable for DSO's. You get a video of a planet and then feed the video file (x.avi ) through software to get an image.

The point here is that it is used on planets and there are not many of them.

[brantuk]

Hmmm.... it's a tight budget for astrophotography but you can make a very elementary start in imaging by careful selection of second hand gear and good negotiating on price. For imaging planets/moon an alt/az motorised mount, a webcam, and some free software is all that's required. If you want to make a start on deep sky objects however an equatorial tracking mount is essential.

I'd suggest you get a manual Skwatcher EQ5 or Celestron CG5 - this will be around £100 depending on age/condition/extras etc. You ought to be a able to get a 150P optical tube assembly for around the same price. You can upgrade the mount with a brand new Right Ascension tracking motor for around £80 (or dual RA and Declination motors for around £100).

With this setup and a DSLR camera you can make a reasonable start in unguided dso imaging which involves long exposure photography (i.e. holding the shutter open for a couple of mins). You'll also need a T-ring camera adaptor. You'd be able to do planets/moon as well with this set up.

It's only one possible solution and I'm sure others will make different suggestions. Do be cautioned though - astrophotography is very involved - there's a steep learning curve and it can get very expensive depending how far you go. HTH

[malc-c]

I'm aware that my budget isn't going to get me a lot, but I'd like a telescope that will allow me to do some astrophotography in the future, if possible. So can anyone recommend a telescope in the £250-350 range that will get me started? Thanks for reading

Depends on your definition of "astrophotography". Using a web cam to collect images of the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn with a small refractor or mak should be within the upper range of your budget. However if your have your heart set on fain DSO's then IMO you have no hope on that budget, even if you do go down the secondhand route as suggested above. Brighter DSO's yes, you might have a chance, especially if you have dark clear skies, but a lot of fainter objects need multiple images and some form of precision tracking.

[starman1969]

Whe I bought my first scope just over a year ago on eBay, a Celestron Alt-Az mount, it came with a Neximage camera thrown in. I was able to make quite a few images of planets which I never thought possible, beforehand.

[dwswolves]

hi all, thank you for all the advice given so far. Agreed my budget is very low for astrophotography, I was just wondering if there was any scopes out there that would accept a DSLR weight wise, which would allow me to do short exposure photography, moon shots etc. After spending just a little time looking at the equipment required for DSO photography, the scopes, those little, what are they called, CCD cameras (possibly) and the advanced mounts ( I saw a german one for £32k!) I fully understand I'm way out of my league, especially as a beginner, but if there was a telescope out there that I could possibly add to as time went by then that would be good.

I have been looking at the AZ-GOTO scan range of telescopes in the vague hope that they would provide some sort of tracking but from what I'm hearing this just isn't so, more of a tool for finding objects than tracking them, so maybe a manual mount would be best. Thank you again for any and all advice

[brantuk]

You'll find most goto mounts offer tracking including the AZ Synscan Goto's. How good the tracking is I can't vouch for cos I sold mine pretty much straight away (it was purchased for a specific purpose that meant the mount wasn't required).

The thing about alt/az mounts is that, for imaging, they are only any use for planets/moon and can't be used for dso's - due to the nature of the mount. Solar system objects are close, bright, and easily snapped with short exposures so can tollerate two axis tracking. Dso's require long exposures of several mins at a time and require a polar aligned equatorial mount which enables single axis (RA) tracking. Dso's are very distant and very faint and it takes time to gather the light from them - typically 5 or 10 mins at a time. Otherwise you can't achieve the pixel perfect positioning required by DSLR's and CCD chips.

The big advantage of an EQ mount is that you can do both types of imaging solar system and dso's. Hth